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Photo of the author, Rabbi Francine Roston

Ki Tetze: Honoring Creation & Being Good Allies

by Rabbi Francine Roston
Our needs are not always primary. In fact, to be a good ally and a good steward of Creation, we must put the needs of others ahead of our own.
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Rabbi Judith Edelstein, D. Min.

Ki Tetze: We Cannot Look Away

by Rabbi Judith Edelstein, D. Min.
You may be familiar with the notion about the wounded healer, popularized by the author Henri Nouwen in his book by that name. He asserts: “When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed...
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Rabbi Henry Zoob quote

Going Beyond Rectifying Poverty

by Rabbi Henry A. Zoob
These passages (from this week's parshah) go beyond the basic responsibility of physically helping the poor; they challenge us to take into account their dignity and personhood.
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Turning Our To’evot Inside Out: Queering the Torah’s Commandment on Gendered Clothing

by Rabbi Yael Rooks Rapport
Our belief that there is a divinely inspired, ethically enacted pathway for living embedded in a sacred text we reread every year for contemporary relevance makes the entirety of the Jewish project rather queer from its very inception. It is and has always been our greatest strength.
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Unloading Our Neighbor’s Donkey: A Paradigm for Antiracism

by Rabbi Michael Latz
Loving our neighbors is not merely feeling affection towards them; it is joining them when that which gives them life has collapsed and fallen and striving to raise it, and them, up. When our neighbors are harmed, we hurt too; we are interdependent.
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So what do you do for a living?

by Rabbi Darah Lerner
Rabbi Darah Lerner uses the labor laws of Ki Tetze to discuss the treatment of workers in our own times.
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The Beginnings of Gender Justice (Parshat Ki Tetze)

by Rabbi Rachel Adler
Commentary on Parshat Ki Tetze (Deuteronomy 21:10 – 25:19) Laws concerning women’s sexual misconduct are grim testimonies to women’s experiences in cultures where the lion’s share of power and privilege goes to men. But before we can know what to do with these laws, we must clarify what they say and to whom they apply....
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Jewish Health Care

by Rabbi Yonah Hain
The old joke is told about a proud Jewish parent flying to Washington to attend their child’s inauguration as the first Jewish president of the United States. They strike up a conversation with the stranger sitting next to them on the airplane, who asks why they’re flying to D.C. “Well, my daughter Julie is a...
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Envisioning a Just Society

by Mónica Gomery
In parshat Ki Tetze we encounter the case of the ben sorer u’moreh, the wayward and rebellious son. We read in Devarim 21:18-21 that if a child does not obey his mother and father they should bring him out to the gates of the city before a council of elders, publicly declare him a glutton...
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The Just Harvest of Summer

by Rabbi Ilyse Glickman
The intoxicating smell of ripe fruit is just too enticing. My niece takes a bite from one of the peaches we have been picking from an orchard this morning. As the juice runs down her chin, she gives me a sheepish smile as if asking if it is OK for her to be doing this....
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